Community trust promises to cut nurse admin with new IT system

Kent Community Health Trust has purchased an advanced patient management system focused on mobile working, which it claims will cut time spent on administration by nurses.

The trust has bought a community healthcare system called Advanced Community in a contract that will run for a minimum of three years.

Advanced Health & Care, which makes the product, claims it is the “first patient management system designed specifically to enable the mobilisation of NHS work forces”.

The system will be rolled out in phases across the trust over the next two years, replacing current paper and electronic systems. It will be used for referral management, care planning, assessments, patient records, bed management, and appointment booking.

The system also has a mobile application called iNurse, with which community nurses can securely retrieve, record and send patient information from anywhere, regardless of whether a mobile signal is available.

Eldon Macarthur, the trust’s head of ICT operations and telecommunications, said: “Our clinicians are excited about Advanced Community because it will provide a joined-up approach to care.

“It will also free-up administration time and cut duplication of effort, allowing clinicians to see more patients and spend longer with patients during visits.”

Kent Community Trust is one of the largest community service providers in the UK employing in the region of 5,400 staff.

Source:

Press release (attached, right)

Reference:

26 February 2013

Readers' comments
(3)

Anonymous | 27-Feb-2013 8:27 pm

Sounds good to me I want to spend time with my patients not sat at a computer for hours on end inputting data and then worrying that I've entered the data correctly, We have big brother auditing our data input not auditing our pateint care.

I hope that the system is fit for purpose. Ours was that slow and cumbersome that patient time was cut as we filled in endless tick boxes and then had the `big brother` reports of everything that we had `not` done rather than what we had.I hope that new student nurses will learn data processing skills because, believe me, they will need it!